Atlas finally shrugs

Last night LI wrote Paul a semi apology. Starting this series of posts three days ago, we intended to obliquely angle into Paul’s post on ethical individualism. However, we admit the degree of obliquity seems a bit, well, excessive. An unkind critic might call it multitudinously losing the point. Paul wrote back:

“Yeah, I was gonna write you an email from work today, with the subject of "Atlas - start shrugging"! I'm not sure what crazy scheme you have in mind - neither, apparently, do you (though your daimon does!) - but I look forward to reading the resulting opus.”

LI will sniffily ignore the reference to that appalling novel and try to get down to brass tacks in this post. Paul’s post is an enthusiastic appreciation of a book by David L. Norton entitled Personal Destinies: a philosophy of ethical individualism. We thought this was among the best bits we’ve ever read on his site:

“Of especial interest is the fact that Norton understands his account to ground a kind of individualism - an "ism" in disrepute with both Left (collectivism) and Right (communitarianism). Those two poles are often likeminded in taking individualism necessarily to be of the "atomistic" (Hobbesian; sc., merely numerical) variety. Norton's eudaimonism claims to establish "qualitative" individualism: each person, ex hypothesi, is obliged to actualize an excellence uniquely his own; to live in truth to his daimon. The social entailment of this doctrine is the "complementarity of excellences," implying the need for counterparts. Hence an individualism is possible which at once celebrates independence and affirms interdependence and sociality of a kind.”

Our response to this has been to consider a certain set of adventures of the concept of the “ratio,” (oops -- the Germanic amplification of the genitive -- the curse of philosophical class. Sorry) insofar as the human individual is supposed to embody it. If one is to “live in truth” to one’s daimon, it is important to think about the various ways one usually lives – unlike some purists, we like Weber’s term, “lifestyle”, for this. The truth, here, seems to do double duty: it implies, on the one hand, some standard of authenticity to which one can compare one’s lifestyle, and on the other hand, it seems performative – the criteria of authenticity is not prefigured, but is constituted in the living. That doubleness isn't incoherent -- a set of truths can be constituted over time in such a way that future acts can be judged against it -- but it does imply a limit on one's liberty that may, in time, become onerous. No more lighting out for the territory, no more second acts.
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One of the perennial philosophical worries is the degree of error inherent in these various lifestyles. This is why we think the match between Gigerenzer vs. Tversky and Kahnman is fascinating, and casts a certain light upon the qualitatively different points of view that are each haunted, in Paul’s view, by a daimon.

Now, this idea of the daimon is interestingly ambiguous in terms of its site. Where, exactly, is it? this parallels the question we have been pursuing – where exactly is the innate tendency to error – if there is one? Where, that is, is its systematic place?

The early moderns were all very anxious about error. However, until Kant, error was conceived as a thing exterior to the subject. Among other of his functions, Descartes malin genie embodied the exteriority of deception. Hume inflected this line of thinking in a way, insofar as he showed that induction was not logically grounded. However, his intent wasn’t to delegitimize induction – rather, it was to estrange us from our mania about the framework of error and falsity. Induction, being on the side of life or habit, couldn’t be turned off, or doubted in any practical way. All of which went into Hume’s project of showing that reason was and should be the slave of the passions. It is important to note that at the same time that the natural philosophers were worried so about the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, the rising merchant/professional class was increasing sensitive to original sin. But let’s bracket that circumstance.

It was Kant, I think, who first interiorized error as an inevitable formation of the reason itself. There’s a famous passage in the Critique of Pure Reason from the section on the transcendental semblence (Schein). That semblence is the idea that one can deduce how the world is (for instance, whether the world has a beginning or not) from what I would call logic – that is, a conceptual analysis of beginning. Kant writes:

“The cause [of the transcendental semblence (Schein)] is this, that in our Reason (perceived, subjectively, as the human capacity to know) lie fundamental rules and maxims of its use, which have the total appearance of objective principles, and through which it appears, that the subjective necessity of a certain conjunction of our concepts, supported by the understanding, can be maintained. This is an unavoidable illusion, as much one as the illusion, that the sea seems higher on the horizon than on the shore, because we see the former through higher beams of light than the latter; or, even more, so little as astronomer can keep the moon from seeming greater in its setting, even if he is not deceived by this appearance.”

It isn’t surprising that Gigerenzer, too, uses visual illusion as an analogy for cognitive illusion. In Gigerenzer’s work, the necessity he is looking for is ecological – what living function does illusion serve? – rather than metaphysical.

The notion of an error inside (the logical equivalent of Jim Thompson's Killer Inside Me) might seem, at first glance, to have nothing to do with Norton (and Craddick’s) qualitatively different demon. And yet that demon seems inherited from the most famous of all daimons – Socrates. And Socrates is definitely a corrective daimon – a negating spirit. It is not a constructive one:

In the Apology, Socrates says: “…something divine and spiritual comes to me, the very thing which Meletus ridiculed in his indictment. I have had this from my childhood; it is a sort of voice that comes to me, ("some divine (theîon) and spiritual (daimónion) [thing] comes to me...")
and when it comes it always holds me back from what I am thinking of doing, but never urges me forward. This it is which opposes my engaging in politics. And I think this opposition is a very good thing; for you may be quite sure, men of Athens, that if I had undertaken to go into politics, I should have been put to death long ago and should have done no good to you or to myself. And do not be angry with me for speaking the truth; the fact is that no man will save his life who nobly opposes you or any other populace and prevents many unjust and illegal things from happening in the state. A man who really fights for the right, if he is to preserve his life for even a little while, must be a private citizen, not a public man.”

If Socrates is speaking truly, then perhaps the daimon is insufficient to ground Paul’s desire that “an individualism is possible which at once celebrates independence and affirms interdependence and sociality of a kind.”

So -- this is the end of this series of posts. A null-set end? An irony? Not really. LI is neither playing the village explainer or the answer guy, here, but simply responding to an interesting idea with a bunch of his own questions.